Warner Bros. has announced a 4th September release date for Avalanche Studios' Mad Max in the UK.

That date applies to the game's PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions.

There's no mention at all of the previously-announced PS3 and Xbox 360 editions, and a Game Informer report confirms that these have been "left by the wayside" to focus on optimising the PC and current-gen versions instead.

Publisher Konami had planned an official announcement tomorrow (there's even a countdown on the Metal Gear Solid website pointing to 2pm UK time on 4th March). But an eagle-eyed NeoGAF user found a couple of video interviews with series creator Hideo Kojima on website IGN's server, and they reveal the release date. (They've now been pulled.)

In the video Kojima stresses Metal Gear Solid 5 will be his final Metal Gear Solid. But then he always says that, doesn't he?

It includes three new maps for use in classic Survivor mode, and new playable character Ricardo, Sevastopol Station's Deputy Marshall.

In The Trigger, set before the events of Alien: Isolation, Ricardo tries to help Marshal Waits destroy the alien by using a package of explosives last seen with one of the marshals. You have to secure Prisoner Processing, track down the missing marshal in Synthetic Storage then blast the alien into space. At least, that's the plan.

The Winter Patch is designed to improve netcode and soldier collision, as well as tweak the Squad Obliteration game mode so it becomes the lead competitive mode in DICE's first-person shooter. The new Squad Obliteration scales down the fast-paced objective-based gameplay of the original to a 5v5 competitive environment.

Frontier has been quietly cornering the market in theme park builders of late, with the likes of Coaster Crazy and Thrillville: Off The Rails - not forgetting, of course, the evergreen Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. Screamride, however, has the fingerprints of publisher Microsoft all over it. The fat-headed, projectile puking thrill-seekers of the developer's most recent efforts have been replaced by a series of gawky avatars and a robot narrator who sounds like the love child of GlaDOS and NintendoLand's Monita. These aren't ruinous changes, obviously, but they're part of a sterile, near-future aesthetic that saps some of the life from an otherwise solidly entertaining family game.
It's most obvious in the Demolition Expert mode, one of three roles you'll adopt during your Screamride career. Here, you're asked to destroy a series of test facilities, usually by hurling a cabin from a giant rotating launcher, or occasionally firing a coaster car into them. The physics are perfectly robust, and the challenges come with plenty of wrinkles: bonus objectives might ask you to pass through three hoops, or to bounce off five trampolines while achieving a given points tally. There's strategy involved, too. Sometimes your targets will be blocked by indestructible barriers, or you'll have to topple structures like dominoes to score big. The act of launching can seem fiddly and awkward at first, but a generous degree of aftertouch allows you to correct wayward throws.

The main issue is that none of it feels real. The facilities remind me of those ludicrously opulent hotels built on Dubai's artificial islands: they exist, yet they seem strangely impossible. The structures here don't really look like they ever housed anyone; they're just buildings designed to be demolished, and that's even clearer when your cabin crashes through the exterior and triggers a blast from some explosives hidden within. The extensive chain reaction that follows might look impressive, but you don't always feel like you had much to do with it.

That isn't always the case, and the best stages essentially turn you into a wrecking ball without the chain. And when you're given a winged coaster, you're encouraged to break the habit of a lifetime by not weaving between buildings but ploughing straight into them. So it's a pity that as you progress you'll find stages growing increasingly restrictive - limiting the speed of your throw forces you to take prescribed routes, bouncing from trampolines to giant magnets which allow you to take aim from a more favourable angle (which has the knock-on effect of making the initial launch feel less meaningful). It's all a little too clean and controlled, a corporate-approved brand of destruction that lacks the potency of its peers. The narration hardly helps - "structural integrity compromised" is a decidedly underwhelming way to celebrate the moment you collapsed a skyscraper onto a passing speedboat.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1740010Mon, 02 Mar 2015 14:39:00 +0000Arcade sticks should now work with Dead or Alive 5 Last Round on Xbox One

Arcade sticks should now work with the Xbox One version of Dead or Alive 5 Last Round.

The Koei Tecmo-published fighting game launched last month with a number of issues, including a lack of compatibility with arcade sticks such as Mad Catz's Xbox One Tournament Edition 2 Arcade Fight Stick.

Overnight, developer Team Ninja issued patch 1.01A for the Xbox One version of Dead or Alive 5 Last Round it's due out for Xbox 360 soon) that means arcade sticks now work with the game.

Greetings, Eurogamers. Thanks for taking time out of your busy internet schedule of disagreeing over the colour of a dress and hopefully not laughing at a 56-year-old woman falling down some stairs to watch some of our videos. We won't keep you long; we know there are red pandas frolicking in snow to be cooed over.

We don't mean to bring the mood down, but have you noticed the endings of some video games are really, thoroughly bleak? Sometimes that's not our fault, we did everything we could, but on these seven occasions we're prepared to put our hands up and say "my bad" when everything goes to pot.

Talking of things going to pot, there's a new instalment in the Resident Evil series. Resident Evi: Revelations 2 might not be as bad as some of the recent main series games - we won't know for sure until the final episodic chapter lands at the end of March - but things would be much easier if Capcom would just follow the instructions laid down in this week's Show of the Week.

The mod in question, Fluffy Manager 5000, still has a few kinks to work out regarding this new feature. For one, it's only effective with gamepads. "Keyboard/mouse controls always affect both players, so it's not usable," Sectus noted in his YouTube notes. Furthermore, the local co-op option still isn't available in Raid mode, though Sectus said he's working on implementing that.

Online servers for Ridge Racer Unbounded have been shut down in Europe, publisher Bandai Namco has announced.

As of today, the game's multiplayer mode is no longer be available on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

"The publisher and developer wanted to take this opportunity to thank, once again, all the players for their support of Ridge Racer Unbounded throughout the years," a statement posted to Namco's official site explained.

This is due to "an unexpected issue" with the PC release. "We don't take this decision lightly, but rest assured that our team is working with Activision to get this content to the PC community as quickly as possible," the publisher said.

But there's a plus side to all this. "In the meantime, we're turning on ‪DoubleXP‬ for all PC players to enjoy," Activision added. Hope that will tide PC players over.

This add-on to Ubisoft's open-world shooter sees you back in the green track jacket of Ajay Ghale as he crashes in a snowy plain occupied by a sinister group of cultists and, as the name implies, yetis.

That's all very well, but for me the most interesting part of this news is that this will mark the very first time Telltale isn't working on a licensed franchise. So what does that mean for its next game?

The first episode of Resident Evil Revelations 2 is out now on all platforms, and you'll be able to pick up the remaining three episodes over the next few weeks. It's certainly a bold new approach for the series, and whether the game suffers from being separated into two-hour doses is something we won't be able to judge until we have our hands on March's concluding episode.

Between now and then though, we're putting together a walkthrough to help you navigate the puzzles and perplexities of each episode on a week by week basis. We'll make sure this guide is fully updated to match the release dates of each chapter, so don't forget to check back as the staggered release plays out.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1739273Thu, 26 Feb 2015 11:03:00 +0000Looks like Destiny is getting a new social space in the Reef

Destiny will gain a new social area in its upcoming House of Wolves expansion, according to a fresh set of leaked screenshots.

The new hub will be set within the mysterious Reef location and will presumably act as another space for players to gather, in addition to the game's main Tower.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1738924Wed, 25 Feb 2015 21:15:00 +0000Video: Pointing, poking and perishing - Resident Evil Revelations 2 gameplay highlightsThe first episode of Resident Evil: Revelations 2 is out right now, much to the delight of Barry Burton fans worldwide. Ian gave it a go during one of our live streams and, well, things got a bit weird. Get ready for a lot of shooting, a fair amount of dying horribly, and a surprising amount of role-playing as a little girl. Oh, and some Cliff Richard.

Microsoft has revealed Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious, a standalone expansion due out on Xbox One and Xbox 360 next month.

According to The AP, Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious, which does not require the base game to play, is out 27th March and will be free until 10th April to promote the 3rd April North America launch of Furious 7, the latest film in the series. After 10th April the expansion will cost $10. We've asked Microsoft for UK-specific information.

Apparently the expansion is set before the movie, and you play as a driver in France who must source vehicles for mechanic Tej Parker, portrayed by Chris "Ludacris" Bridges in the films and game.

Despite its deliciously swift tempo, straightforward controls, lavish high play complexities and matches that can flip on a single misread lunge, Dead or Alive has always struggled to match the fame and recognition enjoyed by its rivals on merit alone. It is a middleweight in a world of heavyweights and therefore must seek attention through other means. A launch in peaceful February for this, the final iteration of Dead or Alive 5, is just one of the ways publisher Tecmo hopes to generate interest in the game. Then there's the extravagant number of characters, hundreds upon hundreds of costumes, play-modes and, of course, those headline-grasping breasts.

Everybody knows the Assassin's Creed series' haystack leaps are ridiculous. But just how ridiculous are they? The students at University of Leicester's physics department, obviously with some time on their hands, decided to find out.

Throughout the games, players are able to jump from enormous height into improbably small patches of straw found on the ground or in the backs of carts.

Characters will always survive the fall unharmed, whatever the height - an unlikely outcome in real life.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1738976Wed, 25 Feb 2015 11:34:00 +0000Hunger Games film studio Lionsgate announces Telltale Games partnershipUPDATE 25/2/15 9.10am: Former EA boss John Riccitiello has also joined the board of directors at Telltale Games.

Riccitiello left EA in 2013 to become CEO of game engine developer Unity Technologies, among other things. His appointment to the Telltale board comes on the same day as film studio Lionsgate's investment, detailed below.

"Telltale has created something entirely new," Riccitiello said in a statement. "Their games combine linear storytelling and gameplay in an entirely new way that is fresh, unique, and compelling.

Rockstar has delayed the PC release date of Grand Theft Auto 5 again - this time, until 14th April.

It is the third launch date that Rockstar has announced for the game's PC version. It had previously been due to arrive on 27th January, and then on 24th March.

The developer has also announced a release date for GTA5's highly-anticipated Online Heists mode, which will launch as DLC for the game's console version on 10th March and be available from launch on PC.

Sex. Sexy sex. The place of it in games is something of a hot button issue in the industry right now, but more often than not when we do decide to discuss digital coupling, we keep returning to the very worst examples of it. Personally I'd love to see a bit more of the old rough n' tumble in games as a whole, but is it too much to ask that, if we're going to Do It, we at least do it right?

"All the viewers that are watching, this is a glitch to get your characters above 20, I guess," 11-year-old Henry Kramer told his viewers on Twitch.

Destiny was Henry's favourite game. He played online with his school friends in the evenings and had poured countless hours into Bungie's online space shooter since he had received a PlayStation 4 for Christmas.

Henry had not one, but three Destiny characters - one for each of the game's character classes. His Warlock was level 31 - just a few in-game materials away from the current level cap. He also had a level 26 Titan and was currently working on levelling his 23 rank Hunter.

Ted Nugent's Stranglehold is a nine-minute beast of a song, a deeply sinister trip to the dark side with a guy who just doesn't know when to quit. The very first line - "Here I come again now, baby / Like a dog in heat" - sets a certain cards-on-table tone. But in addition to its signature juggernaut riff, shred in tooth and claw, Stranglehold also features a long, sparse mid-section powered by a rubber-band bassline. It's during this spooky longueur that the Nuge - or you, if you're playing Guitar Hero World Tour - wrings out odd guitar wails and bursts of distorted squall. It's one of those solos that goes on so long that you almost forget it's part of an actual song, until Ted pops up again, singing hoarsely: "Some people think they gonna die someday / I got news, ya never gotta go." It's an unsettling gospel of everlasting life, preached by a dude who, when he's not generating intensities in ten cities, enjoys shooting flaming arrows. It's also totally brilliant.

Critics like to talk about rock immortality, usually attaching it to the geniuses who leave us too soon: your Hendrixes, your Cobains, your Buckleys. For a while, it looked like the Guitar Hero franchise was going to achieve something comparable - maybe not inventing a brand new genre of rhythm action game, but certainly perfecting and dominating it. The first installment came out at the tail end of 2005 and within 12 months Guitar Hero was a global phenomenon. Five years later, it seemed to simply run out of puff, defeated by the shifting player tastes that also kneecapped its sturdy rival Rock Band. Guitar Hero is dead, essentially, but deserves to be on the cover of Mojo magazine, if only for services to classic rock, introducing a whole new generation to Tom Petty, the Edgar Winter Group and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

But rather than canonising Guitar Hero, anecdotally it feels like former players have a mild sense of embarrassment about all those hours spent doing rock karoake, as if it represented something faddish and ephemeral like collecting Pogs or nursemaiding Tamagotchi. It probably didn't help that the game arrived so perfectly formed, so sui generis, that (subsequent addition of drums and vocals aside) there really wasn't anywhere for it to go. But did we all just stop enjoying it? Was there a moment where, collectively, we looked at the make-believe guitars leaning against our sleek home entertainment centres and thought, in the immortal words of Mark Knopfler, "that ain't working"?

Imagine you are the security guard on the front desk at the Los Angeles Hall of Records in LA Noire. When two guys turn up claiming to be LAPD detectives, don't show you ID, then demand to get up to the chandelier, of course you are going to help them. What's the worst that could happen to the Hall of Records' giant, fragile light fitting?

Sadly, the subsequent marathon session of sweeping up and dismissal for gross negligence is pretty standard for those minor characters who come into contact with game protagonists. These are the nobodies who have to deal with the unintended consequences of all that reckless heroing.

Other videogame heros do a pretty decent job of ruining their own lives. Take Tekken patriarch Heihachi Mishima, whose new game Tekken 7 launched in Japanese arcades this week. Heihachi is constantly being fired into space, turned into a bear, or being beaten senseless by 16-year-old girls, and it's his own fault every time, as evidenced by the Tekken archive of Heihachi being weird.

Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile developer tri-Ace has been acquired by Japanese mobile company Nepro Japan.

Siliconera translated the announcement where it noted that the publisher hopes to develop more smartphone titles with the critically acclaimed console developer in its stable (along with another gaming subsidiary, Mobile & Game Studio).

While best known for the Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile series, tri-Ace also collaborated with Square Enix on Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13 and Final Fantasy 13-2 where it assisted in game design, artwork, programming and other areas. It also developed the 2010 RPG Resonance of Fate, which our Simon Parkin recommended.

Whatever your stance on the humble moustache, mutton chops, beard or goatee, facial hair can be found growing with reckless abandon on a number of gaming's most memorable protagonists (and a few forgettable ones to boot). Once you delve a bit deeper, however, a pattern starts to emerge from among the bristles; facial hair is, basically, game developer shorthand for emotional development.

Don't believe me? Watch the video below and you'll soon see that if a game character wants to do a bit of grieving, they best chuck away their shaving kit first.

The World Cup winning captain will be available from 6pm today as part of FIFA 15 Ultimate Team Legends. FUT Legends is exclusive to the Xbox versions of the game.

Centre back Moore, who famously captained England during their 1966 World Cup triumph, is rated 88 overall by EA Sports. That's two points above Manchester City's Vincent Kompany, but one below Real Madrid's Sergio Ramos and PSG's Thiago Silva. EA put out an infographic comparing Moore's various statistics to those of current players in the game.

DICE has called on Battlefield 4 players to help it build a new map for the game.

This map will be tested and tweaked in the Community Test Environment (CTE) by Battlefield 4 Premium members, creative director Thomas Andersson wrote in a post on Battlelog.

It will then be released as a free download to all players on all platforms, "as a thank you to the Battlefield community for sticking to your Battlefield 4 guns and giving excellent feedback to improve the game", Andersson said. Expect it at some point in 2015. Any ideas?

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1738029Fri, 20 Feb 2015 08:44:00 +0000New Rock Band is in development for PS4 and Xbox One - report

A new Rock Band game is in development for PS4 and Xbox One, according to a report from Bloomberg.

While credited to "a person familiar with the plan," the Bloomberg report corroborates recent speculation that Harmonix is planning to relaunch the series as it just started adding new DLC to Rock Band 3 after a 21 month Hiatus.

January saw new songs from Arctic Monkeys, Avenged Sevenfold and Foo Fighters, while just this Tuesday Harmonix added Tenacious D's Rize Of The Fenix and Weezer's Back to the Shack to the playlist.

EA will reward those who played any of the last few Battlefield games and buy upcoming cops and robbers spin-off Battlefield Hardline.

The Veteran's Pack is exclusive to owners of Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Battlefield 3 or Battlefield 4 who also buy Battlefield Hardline.

It includes one in-game Veteran's Patch, one 200 per cent Objective Boost (active for 30 minutes once activated), and one 200 per cent Teamplay Boost (active for 30 minutes once activated). Not a game-changing pack, then, but a nice touch.

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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=1737800Thu, 19 Feb 2015 09:57:00 +0000World of Tanks to roll out on Xbox One

Free-to-play combat title World of Tanks will launch on Xbox One at some point in 2015.

The new version will allow for cross-platform play with the game's Xbox 360 edition, and will be kept updated at the same pace (thanks, IGN).

User accounts will also be shared between versions, meaning that existing 360 players will be able to carry over their account and continue where they had left off.